A Coolant That Threatens to Heat Up the Climate

By Brent Harris

July 22, 2016

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CreditIllustration by Oliver Munday; Photo by Getty Images

GASES found in air-conditioners, refrigerators and aerosols are among the biggest threats to our climate. Pound for pound, these hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, can be vastly more powerful for planetary warming than carbon dioxide. World leaders are in Vienna to discuss these pollutants and should agree on a plan to quickly replace them with safer alternatives.

HFCs are on track to contribute up to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. They have become widespread following the phaseout of another refrigerant and aerosol propellant, chlorofluorocarbons, under a 1987 climate treaty known as the Montreal Protocol. CFCs were rapidly depleting the planet’s ozone layer, which shields Earth from the sun’s dangerous ultraviolet radiation.

The treaty has been enormously successful. Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, has called it “perhaps the single most successful international agreement.” Every member of the United Nations has ratified the protocol, and atmospheric concentrations of CFCs have begun to decrease. But the protocol’s exclusive focus on stopping ozone depletion left a loophole. Industry swapped CFCs for HFCs, resulting in a 258 percent increase in the use of heat-trapping HFCs since 1990.

Now we have a chance to significantly reduce the use of HFCs. Dozens of ministers from signatory countries, including Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, have been meeting to draft the parameters of an amendment addressing HFCs that they hope to finalize in Rwanda in October. (Secretary of State John Kerry joined the discussions on Friday.) An ambitious phase down could reduce global warming by .9°F by the end of the century.

That reduction may not sound significant, but it is. Without an amendment, there is little doubt the effects would be devastating, although the science of climate change cannot yet pinpoint the precise damage that would occur.

It is not hard to imagine scenarios where avoiding or delaying .9°F of additional warming proves invaluable, especially when paired with further reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. As warming crosses specific temperature thresholds, scientists expect ice sheets to melt and the Amazon rain forest to die off. Tipping points like these could prove irreversible, and eventually lead to famine and several feet of sea-level rise.

Dollar for dollar, reducing HFCs offers a huge benefit for little comparative cost. But with so little public attention focused on these negotiations, the danger is that we could end up without an amendment, or one that is not sufficiently ambitious to deal with this threat.

The depletion of the ozone represented a tangible danger that people could understand and rally round. Government officials worried that it would lead to increases in skin cancer and cataracts, and the discovery of a growing hole in the ozone layer added urgency. The threat of HFCs, like carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, is more amorphous. The effects of these gases won’t become pronounced for decades.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to HFCs. Propane can be used as a coolant in small air-conditioners at a fraction of the climate impact of HFCs, and ammonia is an industrial coolant with no greenhouse effects. Much of the HFC industry welcomes the regulatory certainty that would come with an amendment, and companies stand to benefit from selling new products. Many of these new products are far more energy efficient, which could double the emissions reductions from phasing down HFCs.

Negotiations have focused on establishing baselines on the use of HFCs and agreeing on a phase-down schedule. We should freeze the global growth of HFCs by 2021 at the latest, and rapidly make the transition to more sustainable alternatives. Each year that we wait, we are likely to emit enough additional HFCs before 2030 to exceed the warming from more than one and a half gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions. That is on par with the annual emissions from all of the vehicles on America’s roads.

The primary objection to an ambitious amendment is cost. The total price tag for an HFC phase down is estimated at $8 billion to $10 billion over the next three decades, which works out to 8 or 10 cents on the dollar per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent. The Montreal Protocol provides for a fund to help developing countries phase down their use of atmospheric pollutants. Much or all of the money is expected to come from the United States, Canada, Japan and the European Union.

Last month, President Obama cleared one of the biggest remaining diplomatic hurdles to an amendment. He secured a vow from India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, to support an HFC phase down, though the country’s earlier proposal for a freeze date of 2031 is not nearly aggressive enough. President Xi Jinping of China has also agreed to support a phase down; the country’s proposed timetable is reportedly more aggressive than India’s but slower than what the United States is seeking. Both China and India produce HFCs and use them widely.

Often, it is a virtue in foreign policy for negotiations to fly under the radar. The opposite is true in this instance. Lack of attention is the greatest threat to a successful amendment. There is no urgency without attention. A deal can slip out of grasp with few repercussions for failure.

Constituents do not throw you out of office for failure to phase down unpronounceable refrigerants. But they should. Without an ambitious amendment to the Montreal Protocol, millions of lives will be measurably worse.